


Then Death Appears, Like the Answer to a Prayer

by prettyasadiagram



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Gen, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, M/M, offscreen child death, season 2 finale spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 04:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/pseuds/prettyasadiagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny is not Haley Joel Osment, and the first person to suggest otherwise will be punched in the face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Then Death Appears, Like the Answer to a Prayer

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "A Myth of Innocence" by Louise Gluck
> 
> There is no onscreen depiction of death/rape, but there is implied offscreen rape in one scene, and the death of a child offscreen. Please, please, please let me know if I need to warn for something else/retag this. 
> 
> This idea was born from that terrible episode, 2x07, in which Danny was a bag of dicks, so I felt the need to rewrite his cultural insensitivity. Doesn't make the episode any less problematic, but there you have it. 
> 
> Spoilers for the Season 2 Finale. 
> 
> Thanks to thatdamneddame for harassing me about this and encouraging feelings, and also for the late night drunk/sober beta.

When Danny turns thirteen, he doesn’t wake up feeling any different. At least, nothing out of the ordinary; his bones still hurt and his voice still cracks when he desperately wishes it wouldn’t. So when his dad lowers his newspaper at breakfast, and eyes Danny nervously, asking, “Feeling any different today, son? Thirteen’s a big one,” Danny just shrugs him off petulantly, his voice breaking halfway through.

It isn’t till he’s fifteen that he remembers this conversation and understands why his dad looked so nervous.

 

+++

 

They’re driving back from vacation the first time it happens. They’d been camping in Maine and God, Danny hates the outdoors, hates the bugs, hates how his hair just fluffs until he looks like a hippie and his mom coos and Matt makes fun of him, but it’s supposed to be “family bonding” time and his mother insists on it every year.

But they’re driving back, finally, with Danny in the backseat, feet propped against the window, staring blankly at the passing forest when he sees a lady standing on the side of the road, hitchhiker’s thumb out and blood pouring down her front. 

“Holy crap! Dad, did you see her? Dad, pull over—oh my God, oh my God—” Danny’s pounding on the window, hyperventilating because this kind of stuff only happens in movies, and definitely never ones with a happy ending.

His dad jerks the minivan over to the side of the road before turning around to yell, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Yelling nonsense, you trying to get us killed?”

“But that girl—she had blood, oh God, blood everywhere, didn’t you see her?”

“Don’t lie, Daniel. Why would you make something like that up? Are you trying to scare your mother? There’s no one there.” But his dad has turned pale and his lips are white around the edges and Danny knows that something’s up. There’s something he’s not telling him.

“Dad, I know what I saw, you’ve got to believe me, can we just—look, let’s just turn around and double check, please—”

His mom cuts him off, “Honey, are you feeling alright? You’re scaring us. Sweetie, we swear, there was nothing there.” She leans over the gear stick to rub his knee. “We’ll stop at the next gas station; maybe your blood sugar is low.”

But he knows what he saw and he knows that his dad knows, and something isn’t adding up.

 

His mom makes him an appointment to see a therapist that weekend. His dad pulls him aside that night, tells him it’s ok, he can see them too—the ghosts—but he can’t tell anybody, definitely can’t react like that, has to learn to just be normal, and Danny looks at him with betrayal, because his dad lied to his face and made him feel like a freak when he knew, he fucking knew, that Danny wasn’t crazy. But he can’t take it back now, and Matty is quiet and nervous around him, scared because his big brother had some sort of “fit.”

So Danny shuts down, stops talking and spends a year in therapy staring sullenly at the therapist who writes “trust issues” and “hallucinations” on her notepad and tries to get him on antidepressants. His dad comes into his room at night and sits on the edge of his bed when he thinks Danny is asleep and talks, tells him he’s sorry, he’d do it all differently if he could, but please son, your mother, this is killing her, and Danny chokes at his unfortunate word choice, because apparently he can see dead people and isn’t that just awesome?

One night his mom comes in, usually she just stands at the door and cries while Danny feigns sleep, but this time she sits down where his dad normally does and runs her fingers through her hair and stays there until morning, quiet.

Two days later he turns sixteen and decides to put this passive-aggressive bullshit behind him, to man up because he’s tired of feeling like a dick and ignoring people, and while he and his dad never quite get along again, his mother cries when he asks for pancakes and grips him so tight he has finger-bruises on his arms for days.

His mom lets it drop, figures it was some freak incident of childish imagination, she’s just so happy to have her loud-mouthed son back, and Danny’s dad never tells her the truth. Danny eventually starts to deny that it ever happened, and that is that. He learns to ignore the ghosts for the most part, and he learns pretty damn fast not to talk with them unless he’s alone.

 

+++

 

You’d be surprised at how few truly angry ghosts are out there. Most of the time, Danny sees the quiet ones, he calls them shades in his head, the ones who don’t know that they’re dead. He sees them working gardens, old ladies pulling weeds, whose outlines are sort of blurry; middle-aged men in suits staring blankly as they ride the train into the city, not noticing when someone steps on their feet. He likes them, they don’t bother him, just give him a kind of peaceful feeling.

In fact, he doesn’t see another violent death until he’s eighteen and walking along the creek behind the school, thinking about college and how far he can possibly get away from Jersey before he misses the traffic and the noise and the surly attitudes. He’s minding his own business when he sees a girl sitting on the bank, feet swirling the water, and everything is normal until he spots the blood high on her thigh, how her skirt isn’t quite all there, and when she turns to him, there’s the customary blank stare he sees on the dead and the bullet hole in her forehead.

Fuck.

And Danny’s scared, oh God is he fucking terrified, but he has a neighbor about her age, like she’s just starting high school, maybe, and all he wants to do is punch someone, because this shouldn’t have happened and he shouldn’t have to see anyone like this, but he can’t just leave her, can’t just walk away knowing that somewhere in these woods her body is probably half-buried, discarded like last week’s takeout.

He walks toward her, slow and careful, and she looks right at him, “I have to be home by sundown, or Mom gets worried,” and his heart just breaks. She can’t be more than fifteen. He holds his hand out and she takes it, leads him to her body downriver and when he asks her what happened, she just looks at him and shakes her head, eyes terrified.

He calls the police, tells them he found a body in the words, no, he doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t know what happened, just found her when he was walking, no, he doesn’t usually go that way, is that important?, promises to stick around, but really, where is he going to go?

They never do figure out what happened to her, but he never sees her again, and that not knowing drives him to join the police, because maybe he can use this gift for something, not just push it aside like his dad.

 

(When Danny says he’s going to be a cop, his mother cries and his dad just looks at him, proud and concerned, because he knows why and he knows that this could burn his son out, could leave him a used up shell of a person, because caring that much never ends well. But he claps Danny on the back all the same, pulls him in for a hug, and although he says nothing, the look in eye? Well, that helps a bit.)

 

+++

 

His gift comes in handy when he works a beat; his case rate is almost perfect because he knows where to look, what questions to ask, and you could say he has an unfair advantage with the dead whispering over his shoulder, but even without his apparitional helpers, he closes his cases and digs and doesn’t let up, since just because he can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there, doesn’t mean he can’t help.

When he’s promoted to detective, his parents and Matt take him out for dinner and his dad gets drunk, drunker than Danny’s ever seen him. His mom smiles wanly and excuses herself to the bathroom. As soon as she’s out of earshot, Danny’s dad leans over and grips his arm tightly, “I am proud of you, you know, for using your gift,” and Matt looks confused and looks questioningly at Danny, and the only thing he can do is say “Thanks, Dad, but I think you’ve had enough to drink.”

The words are nice to hear, but they don’t mean much if his dad has to be so drunk he can barely stand, just to get the words out.

 

+++

 

Then Danny meets Rachel and his gift doesn’t matter so much anymore, not when he has Rachel to come home to instead of a cold apartment with nothing but an old TV and a ratty sofa-bed. So he focuses on Rachel, on keeping her happy and keeping her with him and then there’s Grace, who he loves so much it hurts and he can’t see anything wrong in the world because his daughter is alive and smiled at him this morning and gummed at his thumb, and what can be wrong in the face of that?

He doesn’t tell Rachel about his gift, doesn’t want to scare her off, because he knows she won’t react well, not when she scoffs at his St. Michael’s medallion and how his parents raised him on church every Sunday.

 

(Danny had a girlfriend in college who grew up believing in the occult, and when he told her one night what he could do, what he could see, she smoothed her hands along his cheekbones and whispered, “baby, I believe you,” and tried to use him to find her dead relatives, but it doesn’t work like that and she didn’t like that too much, so they didn’t last much longer. Danny just kept quiet after that.)

 

+++

 

Eventually things fall apart, things go wrong because Danny spends too much time at work and doesn’t he know it’s dangerous? How can he expect Rachel to sit home alone with Gracie, worrying about him and their daughter and her work? It ends in divorce and the move to Hawaii and things are quiet for a bit, no ghosts and no danger, until he meets Steve.

 

Steve is stubborn and recalcitrant and refuses to lower his gun, and Danny can yell that he’s the investigating officer till he’s blue in the face, but it won’t make a difference. To make matters worse, Danny can see the deceased, can see Steve’s father, standing behind Steve and shaking his head, like yes, that’s his son, stubborn as a fucking mule and just as obnoxious. So Danny yields, lets Steve get his way, because he can help, he can make this right, but then John McGarrett fucks right off and Danny never sees him again, like John just needed to make sure that his son wouldn’t be alone. Danny is fine with that, he likes Steve well enough, but some advance warning would’ve been appreciated before he was stuck with John McGarret’s pain in the ass son, and Goddammit—Hawaii was supposed to be restful.

 

+++

 

Danny sticks with Five-0, because what else is he going to do? John McGarrett got him into this mess, he might was well stick around to make sure Steve doesn’t accidentally blow himself up with a random grenade. And seriously, who keeps those in the glove compartment?

This seems to work well enough: Danny deals quietly with the odd ghost that he encounters, calls the Anonymous Hotline from a payphone across town, and gets on with his life. He sees Gracie alternating weekends and has weekly BBQs with Steve, surfing lessons from Kono, and Thursday beers with Chin. He has a routine, a team, and he’s happy. And then Matt comes to visit and things go downhill quickly.

 

It rips his heart out to watch his baby brother walk onto that plane, knowing that his only options are to shoot him or watch him go, watch him cut off ties with his family and run until he can’t run anymore. But Danny can’t shoot him, not when he remembers Matty sitting by his bed during his year of silence and reading to him, sneaking him candy and hugs because he missed his chatty older brother. So Danny lets him run, lets him turn his back and live for a limited sense of living, and once that plane takes off, Danny just collapses, sits by the runway gripping the fence and breathing slowly in-two-three, out-two-three, because if he doesn’t focus on that he’s never going to stop crying.

 

The team doesn’t bring it up, thankfully, and eventually Danny stops looking so fragile in the mornings, talks with a little less bravado because he’s pretty sure he’s come to terms with his brother’s life on the run. And this lie works for six months, until his dad calls him up and breaks everything with four innocuous words: “I saw Matt today.”

Danny knows he doesn’t mean he saw him at the grocery store, saw him at home because everything’s finally ok, because Matt, as much as Danny loves that kid, isn’t smart enough to get himself safely back into the country, which means Danny’s dad saw Matt, means that Matt’s dead and never coming back, not even in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit with limited visiting hours. Means that Matt, his baby brother, is gone.

And Danny can’t say anything in response, the two of them just breathing down the phone line, knowing that no one else would believe them. Eventually Danny chokes out a “Thanks,” and hangs up before he can hear his dad cry.

He doesn’t call in sick, can’t stand to be alone yet, but something’s clearly up when he doesn’t berate Steve for the excessive use of camo paint when they have to do a ground search in the jungle. Chin nudges him on the way back to the cars, but Danny just waves him off, spouts some excuse of no sleep and worse coffee, and Chin clearly doesn’t believe him, but lets it go. 

 

Danny goes home that night and drinks himself to sleep and wakes up to Matt knocking on his front door, a single gunshot to the forehead, execution style, and Danny just turns and dashes to the bathroom, barely getting the lid up before vomiting. Matt saunters in behind him and says, “Hair of the dog?” and Danny can’t help but laugh, because that’s Matty all over again, cracking terrible and inopportune jokes, and did Danny really think death would stop that? But he can’t look at his brother for too long, because he just remembers everything he did wrong by Matt, and that way leads to nothing good.

“What are you doing here, Matt? I thought you were in Jersey—Dad said he’d seen you, and I thought you’d be gone by now.”

“Yeah well, imagine my surprise when he could see me. And then he said he’d let you know I was around. So presumably, you could see me too. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Danny scoffs. “Like you told me about your money troubles? How do you bring that up in conversation, oh by the way, I see dead people? No way was I reenacting Haley Joel Osment, I’m classier than that.”

Matt just looks at him, scuffs his foot against the cheap linoleum. “I am sorry, you know that, right?”

And Danny can’t respond because his brother looks broken, but then his phone is singing out “Here I come to save the day” and he doesn’t have to respond just yet, because of course he’s late for work and Steve is calling. He makes his excuses, talks over Steve and hangs up, almost positive that Steve will show up at his door in about fifteen minutes, because Danny definitely didn’t sound “Ok, just tired.” He knows what he sounded like: like he’d just woken up from a bender and was getting started on round two.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, he must have broken more speeding laws than usual, Steve is pounding on Danny’s rickety front door, demanding that he open up or Steve will kick the door in, so help him God. Matt is just lounging in Danny’s one armchair, making whipping motions, snarking about how worried Steve is, and why didn’t he know they were married? Was this before or after he left?

Danny knows Matt is just being a dick, he doesn’t mean it, but that doesn’t mean his glare is any less vicious as he points his finger at Matt and whispers, “Shut up. Just—two minutes, please,” and then he puts his hand on the door and in his most commanding, shut-up-Steve-and-listen voice, he says, “Steven Joseph McGarrett, if you break down my door, I will resign and be back on the mainland before you can call the Governor. Do not push me. I will be back at work tomorrow. I might even forgo a tie if it will get you to leave quickly and without a fuss. But you need to fuck off right now, or I will end you.”

There’s silence and then a loud thunk as Steve drops his head onto the door. “You just—you didn’t sound right, Danno. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, nothing. I swear. Would I lie to you? I just need a personal day, nothing major, I promise. Back at work. Tomorrow. Tie-less, even.”

Steve grudgingly gets into his truck and Danny can hear the comforting rumble of the engine and wants nothing more than to be in the passenger seat, bitching as Steve flouts all rule of traffic, but he has a brother to deal with, and that trumps all things.

When he turns around, Matt hasn’t moved, but he does look wistful, like he’s finally realized what he lost by becoming a fugitive and playing with fire. It doesn’t make Danny feel any better, but it makes the conversation a bit easier. A sad Matt was always simpler than a petty Matt.

Danny drops onto his bed and rests his head in his hands. They sit quietly for a long while, the only sound the alarm clock ticking on the nightstand, until Danny sighs and asks what happened.

“They finally realized I was shit with money.”

True, no one was more surprised than Danny when Matt decided to be a hedge fund manager. But still, “You didn’t deserve that.”

“Eh, bit late for that now. But I just wanted to say I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you choose like that, and—”

Danny cuts him off, pulls Matt into a hug, “Shut up, just—fucking shut up, ok, you’re my stupid kid brother and I would make that choice every single time, so just stop talking.”

Matt makes a choked sound into Danny’s shoulder and clings a little bit tighter.

Later, when Danny ducks into the kitchen to grab a beer, still talking to Matt over his shoulder, he’s not even surprised that by the time he turns back around, Matt’s gone. Danny knows he won’t be seeing him again.

 

Danny shows up early to work the next day, tie-less as promised, only to find Steve already there, coffee and donuts in hand, both still warm, and he just looks at Steve, stops in the entranceway and stares.

“I figured you’d want to catch up on the paperwork from yesterday.”

Danny walks over to Steve and relieves him of the coffee. He takes a sip: sugar, enough cream to clog arteries; just the way he likes it.

Steve sort of fidgets. There’s no other way to put it and it’s like watching a cat flush the toilet over and over again—bizarre and totally fascinating. Danny’s never seen Steve look so anxious before. This is a whole new level of Constipated Face.

“I mean—you don’t have to talk about it, but, if you do decide, I mean—if you want to, I’m here.”

Danny takes another sip and nods. Thinks about this sudden role reversal, about Steve talking about feelings and Danny getting to be the stoic one.

It’s unbearably awkward, and Danny has a new respect for all the times Steve sat through Danny begging him to just talk to him about his dad, the case, anything. Danny can’t take it anymore, he’s not actually equipped for silence and Steve looking a little lost is doing strange things to his insides, so he nods and smiles gratefully, says, “Thanks,” and shakes the cup in some mangled form of a salute, before heading into his office to tackle what is indeed a mound of paperwork from yesterday.

Chin and Kono give him looks when they come in, but they follow Steve’s lead and don’t bring yesterday up. And that’s that. Things carry on. Steve pulls out his thigh holsters at the slightest provocation, Kono breaks more arms than necessary, and Chin continues being quietly competent, shotgun at the ready.

 

+++

 

The team never pulls a case that directly needs Danny’s ability, which, for the record, Danny is totally fine with. He likes dealing with the living; for one thing, they’re easier to read and infinitely more chatty. Getting information out of ghosts is harder than you think. Movies make it seem like all the dead want is vengeance and retribution, but nope. Plenty of ghosts are content with wandering around, aimlessly following their loved ones. Besides, Danny knows how to deal with the rare, talkative ghost. He grew up in Jersey, for Heaven’s sake, one pissy ghost is nothing compared to rush hour on the Jersey Turnpike.

But anyways, Danny rarely sees ghosts that need his help. Shades yes; he sees more shades than he can shake a stick at, but they aren’t his problem. In fact, Danny’s feeling pretty good about his ability and its relative un-importance in his life, until the team gets a call that someone found a body and some parts on a sacred burial ground.

 

The call comes in Halloween night and while Gracie is more than happy to cut short her night at his temporary rattrap hotel, it stings a bit. Danny watches, a bitter twist to his mouth, as Rachel comes and picks up Grace, before he gets in his car. Crime waits for no man, after all.

Pulling into the cemetery, Danny sees the rest of the team standing just outside the grounds by this low wall, like it’s beyond their capabilities to hoist one leg over, and then the over, to get to the fucking crime scene. When then he steps out of the car and walks over, he sees why. Sees the decayed corpses standing about, looking a bit lost and confused, except there’s one that looks pissed, like someone took a dump on his grave, only he’s not angry at the haoles, no no, he’s looking at this white bag with blood leaking out, at this hand sticking out of the freaking ground, and his eyes are burning. Danny can see the man’s jaw clenching from twenty feet away, he doesn’t know how his crew can’t feel the anger and the sheer hate coming from this man whose sacred land has been defiled.

Kono says something about waiting for the priest, so that he can calm the spirits and make it safe, and Danny just sort of looks at the ghosts he knows no one else sees, looks at how betrayed and hurt their faces are, and knows that no amount of chanting and praying will soothe these ruffled spirits, only closure and good old-fashioned brutality. The old man, the one with the clenched jaw looks at Danny and sees, beckons, curls his bare bones with that set jaw, demanding that Danny do something, because he knows, he knows that Danny can see him, that Danny can help him.

(Danny would also swear that he can he teeth grinding, but that’s probably just Steve, who’s a little tense and uncertain because Danny hasn’t really said anything yet, still too focused on the group of ghosts--Passel of ghosts? Like murder of crows? Shrewdness of apes? Is there a proper collective for ghosts? Danny wonders.)

Steve nudges him, “Danno, you ok? Are we boring you?” 

Danny sorts of shuffles himself back into place with this weird look on his face, a little tighter around the eyes than normal, and says, “Yeah, I’m fine,” but the ghost of the priest—Danny can only assume—is beckoning, and so Danny follows.

There’s some half-hearted conversation, where Kono and Chin try to stop him, warn him, and Danny knows he probably comes off as this asshole, culturally insensitive haole, if the way the locals are glaring is any indication, but to be honest, he’s more concerned about the dead bigwig who looks like he’ll start rattling sticks and throwing spears if Danny doesn't cooperate. So Danny climbs over that wall, stands among the dead and feels at home, feels at peace with those expressions on the ghosts that immediately surround him, because no living priest could save this scene, not when the violation still feels like salt on an open wound. A dead priest, that’s a different story, and Danny assumes that there’s an implicit blessing in the furious hand gestures of the ghost, so he rolls with it. He does his job, he snarks with Steve, curses when that asshat veteran throws rocks through his windshield, because he can’t tell him that Goddammit, he’s just doing his job, so fuck off.

But life goes on, they catch the killer, and if Steve looks a little differently at Danny after a certain comment about how he’s pretty sure the spirits are A-OK with him seeking justice, Danny tells himself it doesn’t matter.

 

(To be fair, Danny does feel like a dick after making Steve and Chin carry the mattress back downstairs, but he really, really is tired of ghosts and the chaos they bring into his life, and so even if Ms. Kukuoa is the nicest, most discrete shade to roam Hawaii, he just can’t take it right now.)

 

+++

 

Danny’s first clue that Steve thinks something is up, comes when he calls Danny into his office, oddly serious, and asks him—politely, to Danny’s surprise—to sit down.

He sinks down into one of the most deceptive chairs that he has ever had the misfortune to sit in. The thing looks comfortable, all soft looking leather and padding, but then there’s a spring poking into each kidney, and it squeaks like his childhood bed. “Christ, Steve, I’m pretty sure you could ask for new chairs. These are awful, and I say that as someone who has been sleeping on a pull-out couch for three months.”

Steve doesn’t even laugh, just looks Danny in the eye for a split second before becoming incredibly interested in the scarring on his knuckles, “I’m worried about you, Danno. You’ve been—off. Lately.”

“Off?”

“Like—I saw you? Last week, behind the office, talking to yourself. And sort of pacing? And sometimes you make these faces at nothing, like you’re trying to tell someone something, but no one is there? It’s just--worrisome.”

Danny sits for a second. Processing. “Steven. Let me walk you through my morning routine: I come into work and immediately check to see if you’re wearing thigh holsters already. I don’t go to my desk. I don’t see if you’ve already made coffee—which, by the way, would it kill you? You’re the first one here, be considerate—I check your wardrobe. I can guess how crazy my day will be, based on your attire.

“If I decide you seem relatively sane, I go do some paperwork before the shit inevitably hits the fan. On an average day, I must come up with Governor-friendly phrases that essentially mean some variation of the following: Steve hit them a lot, Kono did too, or Chin beat someone upside the head with his shotgun. Miranda Rights read by Daniel Willams as the criminals beg for mercy. It’s not easy. I actually bought a thesaurus. Not for Gracie. For myself. It also promises to double as a blunt object, should the need to beat you into submission arise.”

Danny Williams, master of deflection, thank you very much.

Steve stifles a grin behind his hand. “Maybe you should lay off the coffee, Danno, if it makes you so—twitchy.”

“Twitchy? Ugh, don’t even start Steve, I have more nervous tics now than I did when I was trying to ask out Maria Fletcher in the sixth grade. I’ll try to be less—twitchy, as you put it—if you will actually call for backup, instead of doing that when I’m sitting on a suspect and Kono has one in a chokehold.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

And that’s that. Crisis averted.

 

+++

 

Unfortunately, the universe is conspiring against Danny, so it all comes to a head four months later, when three kids go missing in a week’s time, all children of high-powered and well-connected CEOs. All same MO: taken off a playground as school lets out, all done in broad daylight, ransom note delivered later in the day. The media alone is a freaking circus, but the governor is also on the phone every 15 minutes demanding an update, anything he can tell the press. Steve tells him they are doing their jobs, any leaked info could harm their chances of finding this shithead.

This holds up until it’s been two weeks and still nothing, and then a body shows up, the first girl taken, Claire Saunders, left on the beach and wrapped in a tarp, and she’s been cut and Danny can’t look. Can’t see her without seeing Grace, without thinking that he’d cut his own heart out if he could bring her back. He takes one step onto the scene and promptly turns, says he needs a minute, and Steve’s like, “Yeah, Danno, of course,” and Danny just keeps walking till he gets to this grove of trees, leans against a stump, and just pulls on his hair, deep breaths, slow and even. Pulls out his phone and calls Gracie, tells her he’s just saying hello, saying he loves her, and she sounds confused even as she says, “Love you too, Danno.”

He rests a moment longer, collecting himself and smoothing his hair back down, when he hears, “Hey, mister?” There’s this tiny voice, painfully small and uncertain, and Danny’s heart just breaks.

He turns his head and sees her, that little girl he walked over here to avoid, even if only for a few minutes.

“Where am I?” She asks, tugging at one of her braids.

Danny can see Steve watching from over by the crime scene, glancing over at Danny every other minute, and it’s all he can do not to lose it and make a scene of his own.

 

+++

 

Danny spends a week with this girl following him around, trying discretely to ask her questions about what she remembers, but Steve has apparently figured out that something is up and as a result is inconveniently clingy. It gets to the point where Danny tries to head out for the night, only to open the car door for the little ghost girl and then turn to see Steve, fucking Steve, looking at Danny like he’s out of his mind. Danny just thumps his head on the door, calmly walks to the driver’s side, and drives away, Steve still standing in the parking lot, confused.

He comes in the next morning rocking the crazy eyes, he’s not stupid, Danny knows how cracked out he looks, but you try getting straight answers out of a confused, hysterical eight year-old girl who just wants to go home and doesn’t understand that she can’t. 

Danny gets to console and question, either exhausting on their own, but he comes in with answers and just storms into Steve’s office, announcing to all and sundry, “It was the nanny service—that guy with the stupid name—Rhett? Brett? His alibis don’t check out and his bank statements are fucking suspicious and the knife is in his garage, not such a bright boy, really,” not caring that he isn’t wearing a tie and his hair looks like a hot mess and there’s an awkward coffee stain high up on his left pant leg.

Steve stands, hands outstretched, like he’s trying to calm a spooked horse, “Danny, how much coffee have you had? Better yet, when was the last time you slept?”

Danny just collapses into Steve’s crappy office chair and trembles, springs as painful as ever, but they ground Danny and he needs that, because otherwise he’s still in his rattrap motel with a crying child who just doesn’t understand why she’s hurt and can’t go home, and so he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and shakes.

When he opens his eyes again, Steve is crouching in front of him, hands sort of hovering, biting his bottom lip, like Danny’s primed to explode, and who knows, maybe he is, but, “Please, Steve. Just for once, take my word. No questions. Just trust me, please. I’ll explain later.”

And Steve nods, and Danny does explain later, after he’s slept for fourteen hours and wakes up to Steve sitting in Danny’s only chair, which is barely more hospitable than that devil chair in Steve’s office--seriously, Danny’s got bruises on his kidneys to prove it. But he wakes up to Steve and coffee and that steely look in Steve’s eyes that lets Danny know that just saying, “Lucky guess,” won’t get him out of anything this time, so Danny just rolls onto his back and traces the water stain on the ceiling with his eyes and starts from the beginning.

 

+++

 

Honestly, it goes better than Danny was expecting. No punches were thrown, and even though it’s hard to prove--he sees ghosts, he doesn’t summon them—Steve takes it in stride. Asks once about his dad, and Danny just shakes his head, “Not since the first time” and “He knew you’d be alright—you had me.”

Steve makes a comment about Ghost Whisperer, and Danny just smiles, “Screw you, I’m totally prettier than Jennifer Love Hewitt, and you know it.”

Steve doesn’t deny it. Danny takes it as progress.

 

(Chin and Kono find out in some complicated chain of events that Danny blames on Steve, and Steve blames on Kamekona for some reason, but Chin shrugs, “That explains some things” and Kono chimes in helpfully, “In particular with the talking to yourself. We were getting worried, brah.”

Steve just laughs and laughs, while Danny looks outraged.)

 

+++

 

If Danny had been hoping that this sharing of his secret would be the catalyst to bring him and Steve together, it only takes two weeks to realize that he is sadly incorrect. This is the second time that Steve has ducked out of their weekend plans, and it was even a weekend with Grace. There had been some excuse, I have to wash my hair, or something, but Danny had stopped listening after Steve’s awkward, “Sorry....”

So when Danny shows up late to a crime scene, because he actually drove the speed limit, he’s pissed. He hates being late, but hates more that Steve isn’t there in the driver’s seat giving him shit about his tie looking worse than usual, but Steve hadn’t come over this weekend because he’s under some misguided impression that Grace and Danny need father/daughter time, need family time, but doesn’t he see that he’s Uncle Steve now? That Grace lights up when he shows up, when he hoists her over his shoulder and chucks her into the ocean? But whatever, that’s an argument for another time, a time when Danny will have plenty of time to use big gestures and enunciate his words so that Steve gets it through his Neanderthal skull that Grace and Danny want him there, want him in their shitty apartment getting waffles on Sunday morning, because the diner down the street serves the best peach waffles that Danny’s ever had, and Steve likes to sit in the corner of the booth with his hand curled around the chipped ceramic mug, coffee hot and strong and smelling like everything Hawaii looks like on the postcards.

He had planned on having that confrontation at the office, somewhere without an audience, but then Steve, visibly uncomfortable, asks how his weekend was, how Grace is doing, and even Chin, normally stoic Chin who just ignores the tension between Steve and Danny, gives Steve this look of disbelief before he drags Kono away to talk to the officers on the scene.

“Well, Steven, you were invited to join us, if you remember. In fact, you were expected to join us. What happened? Gracie’s asking about you, you haven’t been over in weeks, and actually, now that I think about it, you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not, Danno, don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, no, don’t ‘Danno’ me. You’ve been avoiding me. You don’t come over, you cut bar night short—what’s going on, Steve? I thought you were cool with the whole—” Danny makes a vague hand gesture, meant to encompass the shit show that is his life.

“Danno, no—I mean, yes, yes, I am ‘cool’ with your ability, it’s just—”

“What? It’s cool in theory but not in practice? No more flirting because I’m a freak? Thanks, Steven. That’s really nice of you.” Danny turns sharply to walk over to Chin.

Steve grabs his arm and pulls him further away from the crime scene. “It’s not that. Danno, I swear. I just thought, we’d been sharing looks and I thought that—oh God please stop me any time, Danny—”

“Wait, wait. Stop talking. Shut up. Let me get this straight. You thought that we had been having ‘moments,’ so to speak, when actually I was just zoned out looking at ghosts?”

Steve rubs the back of his neck. “Maybe?”

“And you thought that meant I didn’t like you like you?” Danny runs his hands through his hair, frustrated. “You’re an idiot. I’ve been saddled with an idiot. The ghosts have finally addled my brain, because I think I’m finding this endearing? We’re acting like twelve year olds, except I’m pretty sure Grace is more mature than us right now.”

“Probably, but—”

Kono yells over, “You guys done talking about your feelings yet? Or did I miss the trust falls?”

Steve sputters, flushes, and Danny laughs, pulls Steve toward him and shuts him up with a kiss.

 

+++

 

The team never really talks about Danny’s gift in terms of cases, figuring that if it’s relevant to the job, he’ll clue them in.

At first, Kono did like to wander around the office humming that heinous song from Ghost, but after three weeks of making her do her own paperwork, she let that drop. 

Danny had thought it would be Steve who’d make all the pop culture references, but he forgot that Steve exists in a sort of mainstream vacuum, usually at least a decade out of date. Instead, it’s Chin who quotes Ghostbusters, or on one memorable occasion, Scooby Doo. They all agreed never to mention the latter again.

Two months later, they’re trying to track down who shot Fryer, and Steve turns to Danny, his jaw doing this clenching thing that always makes Danny nervous, and asks quietly, “Is he still, you know, here?” 

Danny shakes his head and watches Steve’s face go blank, only for a second, and Danny can’t tell if Steve’s glad that Fryer’s moved on, or if he’s disappointed that Fryer can’t help them wrap this up quicker.

Later on Kono says, “It’s like our shooter’s a ghost,” and the team turns to look at Danny, who throws his hands up, “Hey—Steve said he saw her, so she definitely isn’t my kind of ghost.”

When it turns out that Hillary Chaver is supposed to be dead, Danny worries for a split second that this I see dead people thing might be contagious, before remembering that Max shot her, and his kind of ghosts don’t bleed anymore. He keeps this momentary thought to himself; they might need a laugh when all this is done.

 

(They do actually need that laugh, but it doesn’t help any: Malia is in the hospital, Kono is missing, and Chin comes in to work looking like he went three rounds with Wo Fat and lost, and Danny worries that Chin is turning into a shade before their eyes.

When Chin asks if Danny’s seen Kono, he shakes his head, “And you know Kono, if she was—if she were dead, she’d be up in my face, telling me to tell you to stop crying and go bitch slap the perp with your shotgun, yelling when I didn’t say it exactly right. So if she isn’t here, she’s out there somewhere, and it’s only a matter of time until we find her,” but even as he says it, it tastes like ash in his mouth.

Danny asks Steve if they should be planning something, a service, anything, but Steve says, “Wait;” says, “She’s out there;” says, “We’ll find her, or she’ll find us;” and Chin nods and nods but even Danny doesn’t buy it, not until Kono stumbles in two days later, smelling of salt and sand and looking a hot mess. As the group hug literally tumbles to the ground, Chin’s face buried in Kono’s neck, Danny can hear Chin apologizing over and over again and Kono saying, “It’s ok, cuz, I’m here, I’m here,” a low mantra that Danny focuses on as his hand finds Steve’s amidst the jumble of limbs, holding tight.)

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not repost this work in its entirety or share this work on third-party websites such as Goodreads.


End file.
